


love is more thicker than forget

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Amnesia AU, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Non-SHIELD AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-10-29 20:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: 'He sets down the bag, places the flowers in the vase that waits empty to receive them. She looks up, then, and there’s almost a flicker of recognition before she says what he dreads with trembling lips and glassy eyes;“I forgot my name again.”They tell him that eventually it won’t hurt as much. They tell him that they just don’t know why. He wants to ask a higher power. He wants to take it back. 'Where Jemma doesn't remember anything and Fitz remembers everything.An Amnesia AU and expansion of my 'love is more thicker than forget' prompt fill.





	1. more thinner than recall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whistlingwindtree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whistlingwindtree/gifts).



> Hello!   
> This is the expansion of my 'love is more thicker than forget' prompt fill. If you've read it (chapter 20 in 'In All of Time and Space') then this is exactly like that.  
> If you haven't read that one then welcome! I hope you enjoy it!  
> This comes from an angsty prompt list and so just be aware of that, and this is an Amnesia AU so just please take care of yourself whilst foraging ahead!  
> A story of four parts.  
> The title (and chapter titles) are from E.E. Cummings 'love is more thicker than forget'.   
> I hope you like it :)

He knows as soon as he steps in the ward that today isn’t a good day.

In fact, he thinks he knew before that. When he woke up this morning the leaves on her plant had wilted slightly. The milk was off and then the warning light appeared on the car. The weather is colder now. He saw his breath when he woke up this morning in his empty and lonely room.

So his heart sinks in his chest and he feels a familiar pressure build up behind his nose but still he holds the flowers he carries carefully and makes sure to not bang the carrier bag he carries off the doors. `When he gets to her room he pauses, rearranging his emotions like Tetris pieces, before he beams an almost-genuine smile and enters.

Jemma sits up in bed, looking out of her window. The nurses have already been in, he sees. The bandages on her arm are fresh and white, and the new dressing on her hairline contrasts more so with her hair. That’s also been brushed, too, until it falls in waves around her shoulders. She won’t let him wash it, won’t let anyone touch her like that, and so they’ve been making do with dry shampoo just now. Grey streaks at her scalp. The bottle and the hairbrush lie on the side table.

She doesn’t look around as he enters, too caught on what’s outside. Her lips move ever so slightly. Fitz recognises the game. The desperation of naming everything she can see outside, starting again when there’s a word her brain can’t grab from its memory. On other days it gives him hope, but today is just makes him sad.

He sets down the bag, places the flowers in the vase that waits empty to receive them. She looks up, then, and there’s almost a flicker of recognition before she says what he dreads with trembling lips and glassy eyes;

“I forgot my name again.”

They tell him that eventually it won’t hurt as much. They tell him that they just don’t know why. He wants to ask a higher power. He wants to take it back.

It makes him so angry. For the past five days all he has done is raged a war with three sides; anger and sadness and relief. For she’s alive and that is surely something. But she’s lost her memory, lost herself, and it makes him ache in the strangest way. And he’s so bloody, unimaginably angry that it had to happen to her.

But anger has got him nowhere, as his bruised knuckles and battered bedroom wall can attest, and so he only smiles gently, sits down in the bed next to her and says, “It’s Jemma.”

“Jemma.” She says it slowly, as if tasting it for the first time. “I like it.”

He chuckles, reaching slowly for her hand should she decide to back away. “I’m glad. It really suits you.”

She places her hand over his. It’s freezing. Reassuring. His whole world has been tilted on its axis, hers thrown completely off, but her hands are still cold.

Maybe, just maybe, things will be alright.

“I remember you,” she tells him, eyes earnest. “Not from… before, but from the days you’ve been here. That’s got to be something.”

“It’s brilliant,” he tells her, stroking her hand with his thumb. “Have the doctors been in today?”

“No, not yet. They say I’m a doctor, too, but I…” she looks down, “I don’t remember.”

“Would you like me to tell you or do you want to wait a bit?”

Her eyes, always so infinite, betray a gratefulness that hurts his heart. “Wait until later, hm?”

“Of course.” He smiles but his throat is tight and, regretfully, he lets go of her hand to reach into the carrier bag. “I brought you some things from ho- I mean just some things I thought you might like.”

A nod is all he gets but it’s hopeful and in this moment, it’s enough.

He brings out some things that her family have sent. Childhood toys that produce some recognition. A blanket with ‘Jemma’ handstitched in purple across the front. Then some things from work. A paperweight shaped like a double helix. Her latest completed ‘to-do’ post-it note. Then the things from their home. The things that went in first but he has to bring out last. While she marvels over things her hands know but her eyes don’t, he falters over the things that keep him going.

The photograph of them from university that she keeps on her bedside table. They have their arms around each other, the free hands holding their graduation caps aloft. Then there’s the necklace she wears every day, the one that the paramedics removed along with her other jewellery. It seems safe to give – the last thing he wants to do is make her feel bad for not remembering. Then there’s her jumper, that she wears with pyjamas. The one that’s really his and neither can quite remember when she acquired it.

“It’s so _strange,_ ” she whispers, hands brushing lightly over all the things laid out on the blanket. She looks up at him. “I know all of these things, or at least I think I do, but I don’t know them at all.”

Hear thrumming with hope, Fitz thinks he smiles a little too wide. “That’s good, though. You know them, really. The rest will come back.”

The rest must come back. He wishes for the thousandth time to trade places with her. If it was him… she’d know exactly what to do. She’d have all the journals read, all of the evidence studied. Jemma would be clued up on the brain until her own was coming out of her ears. There would be no punching of walls, no crying herself to sleep until her throat was so raw until she could barely talk. No arguing with the doctors… well, he allows himself a small, discreet smile. Perhaps, in that respect, they are alike.

“I’ll try to remember, Fitz,” she tells him, sniffing loudly. “I promise I’ll try.”

“Hey, hey, Jemma, no.” He sits back down in the chair, taking her hand, holding on tighter than he means to. “No, you jut focus on getting better, alright? Your memory will come back on its own.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

He’s asked himself this question a lot over the past five days. The research he has done, the people he has asked, and everything comes back different. What will he do if she only ever knows him in her heart and not her head?

“Then I’ll help you, alright?” A deep breath. “If you want me to. You’re still Jemma Simmons. Still the best person I’ve ever known.”

For things might change but that will always stay the same. She will always be someone to him. No matter what. There’s nobody else. Could never be anybody else. She will always be Jemma Simmons and she will always be a wonder. Nothing can ever take that away from him.

She chuckles sadly, swiping away a tear with her free hand. “I don’t even know me.”

“I will remind you every day,” he says solemnly, swearing to her and himself and whoever else may be listening.

“At least I know you,” she offers, smiling genuinely. “Not the way I maybe once did but, well, I do know you.”

Tears start to burn his eyes, little pinpricks stabbing over and over. He looks away, noticing the patterns in the grey linoleum. “Yeah,” he croaks, not looking but holding, “there’s that.”

She must sense, because she takes her hand away and claps them both together. “Is there anything else in the bag?”

Surreptitiously he swipes his eyes, coughing before getting up to check the bag again. “Eh, I don’t know. Let’s have a look.”

“These things are nice,” she says absently. “They do help, in a way.”

“That’s good.” His voice is not all there. He feels very far away. All of a sudden as though he’s living a different life, watching himself through a screen or crystal ball. The thought of what he’s forgotten, what they’re meant to be thinking of right now, makes him feel small. Now so more than ever, he wants to turn back the clock and make it all undone.

“F-Fitz?” Always cautiously, as though she’s still not quite sure. “Are you alright?” He feels her nervous gaze. “Is there anything else in there?”

“Uh… nope.” The small black box with her engagement ring sits snugly in the corner of the bag. He folds it over and smiles at her, not quite believing in it. “That’s all for now.”


	2. less always than to win

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2. Jemma comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!  
> So this is part 2. This has absolutely not been posted before so if you've already seen part 1 and are sticking around then you've not seen this one yet.   
> It's a little sad, a little angsty, perhaps a little heartbreaking. But there has to be the rain before the rainbow, yes?   
> I really hope you enjoy it!

They get to come home on a Saturday.

It’s an odd day for a discharge, but that thought only crosses his mind in the first two seconds after the consultant tells him. The second is elation of such a degree that he’s never had in his life. _Maybe things can go back to normal again._ Then the third is a fear, something such as he’s never known before.

“But... but her memory isn’t back yet? So, when you say she’s going home...”

The consultant smiles at him; she’s been so patient with him this whole time. “We’re discharging her into your care, Dr. Fitz, as her next of kin. Her memory may not be back but there’s no medical reason for her to be stuck in hospital. And we tend to find that amnesia patients feel more comfortable amongst a somewhat familiar setting.”

It makes him feel partly better, for he feels as though he can decipher some hope of recovery in the doctor’s tone. Recovery of _memory._ As has just been stated, Jemma is perfectly healthy. Though he’s still worried. Jemma has no idea who he is. She’s still not even sure of herself. Sometimes she murmurs _Jemma Simmons_ over and over again in her sleep, as if trying to commit herself to her newly fragile memory.

“I wouldn’t worry, Dr. Fitz,” the consultant smiles, placing a brief hand on his arm. “She does wish to go back with you.”

Fitz lets it and a hundred other things soothe him. The way Jemma smiles at him when he walks into a room. The she lights up when she remembers small things; the fact that it’s almost winter, that her mother is called Juliet, that Alpha was the name of the family dog when she was a child. The progress is small, minute steps, for she still cannot piece these things all together, but at least they’re in the right direction.

The worries take a back seat, and he almost forgets about them, until he pulls up in front of their house, turns off the ignition, and looks over only to see her face.

“I know this is home,” she says through deep breaths, eyes tightly shut. “But it’s like I’ve only read it in a book.” Tears fall from her eyes when she opens them. “I don’t know it how you’re meant to know it. Not at all.”

He reaches over to take her hands in his. They’re so cold. He cups his own around them, trying to make them warm. “Hey, it’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s fine. Don’t force yourself, alright? Just think of it as a place you’re staying, for now. If it gets too much then we’ll… we’ll sort something out.”

“Okay.” Lips trembling but eyes flashing with a familiar courage, Jemma nods. In his hand, hers grow warm. “Okay.”

-x-

The first problem presents itself at bedtime.

They’ve danced around each other fine enough during the rest of the day and evening, but now night as fallen and neither one can quite pretend they know the steps anymore.

Jemma stands and looks at the bed as if she has forgotten the word. For a horrible moment Fitz worries that she has. But no. Instead, with an incredibly forced smile, she turns to him. “If you just point me in the directions of the blankets and pillows then I’ll settle myself on the couch.”

Fitz is already in the wardrobe, pulling said items out for his own night on the couch. In return, he forces a laugh. “Jemma, don’t be silly, alright? You’re having the bed.”

“No, really, I insist. You look absolutely knackered. I’ll take the couch.”

Does he? He hasn’t looked at himself in the mirror for days. Even shaving has been such a passive task, carried out with no care for the end result. As a scientist, he finds it fascinating how people can change, how circumstances can cause them to alter the very fibres of their being.

“You were just in a multi-car traffic accident.” The words are said lightly, but they taste of bile. “I am taking the couch.”

“Ugh, Fitz. Please. This is your house. I am not kicking you out of your own bed.”

The words don’t hit him, not exactly. It doesn’t feel like that. His heart just stops and he feels ever so sick but there’s no _force_ there; his body scrambling to find out what’s caused him to feel like this. It scares the hell out of him.

_It’s our house. It’s yours and it’s mine and it’s nobody else’s._

“Jemma,” he begins softly, because there’s not enough breath left for anything else. “you know fine well I’m not letting you sleep on the couch while I sleep in the bed.”

And then he recoils when his words do to her what hers did to him. _She_ _doesn’t know._ His carelessness, after what came before, makes him ill. Never before has he wanted to take words back this much.

To her credit, she smiles weakly. That same brave face that he loves but also worries for. “Of course, Fitz.” The smile doesn’t reach her eyes and the laugh sounds pathetic to both of them, but they leave it unspoken. “This bed does look quite comfy.”

“It is,” is all he can croak before he bids her goodnight and leaves her be.

Their couch is comfortable – Jemma made sure of that. All the same he can’t sleep. Not that he was ever expecting to. His mind races with all of the things he wants to say, wants to be allowed to think. About how he never could have slept in that bed without her. That all the days when she was in the hospital he never did. That this is their home, their house. That their lives are so entwined that it’s not as simple as just pulling apart chopsticks, but more like unravelling and unwrapping the DNA double helix. Things get affected, change irrevocably. Things fall apart.

In the back of his mind, in some small naïve part, he expected it to be the way it was when they were at university. They didn’t know each other, well; it took them time. And he thought it wouldn’t be so bad if it went back to that. He could do that. It would be fine.

But things have changed, and how he’s forgotten that he’s a substance who, once changed, could not go back to its original composition. They cannot be those people again. Because they were on the same page, the same people. Two, young, wife-eyed and naïve scientists looking for answers and, though perhaps unconsciously, each other.

Now it’s all different. They are not those people. She knows nothing and he knows everything and the knowledge that he cannot share eats him alive.

Seized by a sudden desire to have something of the past, Fitz bolts up and flips on the light to dig around in the pockets of his jacket that lies abandoned on the coffee table. The velvet underneath his fingers brings him mere moments of relief and he pulls the box out, sitting with it cupped gently between his two hands.

The doctors gave it to him along with everything else after she was pulled from the wreckage. It had been covered in blood and engine grease and that first night he sat by her bedside and cleaned it until it shone so brightly, with the hope that in the morning everything would be right again. And when she couldn’t remember, when she had groggily opened her eyes and asked him who he was, he had put it in his pocket, and decided that he wouldn’t make her feel like she owed him anything. That, eventually, she would find her way back to him and everything would be ready for when that day came.

Tears in his eyes, on his face, that he doesn’t care to wipe away, Fitz opens the box. The ring doesn’t shine the way he remembers. It looks dull and faded and, somehow, he’s not surprised at all.

He closes the box. Clutching it tightly in his hand, he quietly sobs himself to sleep.

-x-

In the morning he forgets.

He wonders why he’s asleep on the couch. What did he and Jemma do last night? Were they out? He hasn’t slept on the couch since Daisy’s engagement party got a little bit out of hand…

But then it comes back. Those seconds go as quickly as they came and he is left with the memory of what reality is for them now.

Someone is singing in the kitchen. Fitz hears the radio, the sound of a whisk against the bowl, the splashing of milk into a jug. Normal Sunday morning sounds. What he knows to be true, and what he hears are very different things. Before he goes to investigate, he tucks the little velvet box back into his jacket pocket and hangs it up behind the door. Out of sight, just not quite out of mind.

He watches her in the kitchen. Just for a moment. Her hair tumbles loose across her shoulders – he recognises the freshly washed wave it has. Her forehead has that crease in it, the one she gets from concentrating. She peers into her recipe book before whisking what appears to be pancake batter. The radio plays an upbeat tune but his heart slows. She looks up and sees him watching and she beams and it’s almost the same.

“Good morning, Fitz.” There is no longer the pause before his name. Small steps in the right direction.

He pushes off the doorway and walks into the room. “Morning, Jemma.”

“I’m making pancakes,” she announces, grabbing a ladle from beside the cooker. “It felt like the right thing to do.”

Cautiously delighted, he nods. “Um, yeah. I mean if it feels right. I’ll never turn down pancakes.”

She chuckles, tilts her head slightly to one side. “I thought you would say that.”

They hold each other’s gaze for a second too long and the moment becomes too heavy to hold. They both cough, look away. He shuffles on his feet, unsure of the next steps.

Jemma’s the brave one. She points her ladle at the table, to the mug sitting on it. “I made you tea.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.” His hands wrap around the cup like it’s a life ring. The warmth floods into his bones. Things feel bearable now.

“It already has milk and sugar in it. I wasn’t sure of the exact quantities so I’ve left the spoon for the sugar by the sink just in case.”

Knowing that he’ll never do that, he takes a sip of his tea, and closes his eyes and breathes deeply when it tastes exactly right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day!


	3. it is most mad and moonly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 3. There's a little sunshine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So sorry this took longer than expected - things are in full swing now but hopefully the fourth part won't be too long in coming.   
> Thank you so much for being so kind and all your lovely kudos and comments. I appreciate every single one!  
> This is a much kinder chapter, I feel! I hope you enjoy it!

She asks him the next again Friday.

They’re sitting in the living room watching television. It’s near nine at night, and the lighting is low. They sit at opposite ends; her on the right side of the couch and him on the armchair on the left. He knows that neither of them are really watching whatever comedy is playing, too busy lost in their own heads.

In the old days they’d be talking or working silently side by side and occasionally bouncing ideas off the other. If it was later, they’d be leaning on each other, until eventually they awoke at one in the morning, limbs all entangled around each other and the television still playing in the background.

He tries not to think of the past. It’s not good for Jemma and it’s not good for him. He’s trying to embrace this new present, he really is, but he hopes that the future will be more similar to the past. But he’s trying not to think about it.

“Do you miss her?” Jemma asks, still looking at the television. Fitz can tell it’s a deliberate move.

“Miss who?”

“Oh, you know, the old me.” She looks down at her hands, twisting and turning in her lap. “Who she used to be.”

“There’s nobody to miss,” he says quietly, trying to sound sincere but finding that his voice comes out quite shaky.

“Come off it, Fitz.” Jemma’s eyes narrow dangerously at him. “I don’t need protecting. I was the one who asked you the question.”

“And I’m giving you a truthful answer. You’re Jemma Simmons,” he says simply. “And you come in many different forms. There’s no singular you.”

Tearful, she looks at him like he might be lying, but the fact is that this is the rawest thing he’s said in weeks. There is no one Jemma Simmons, there never has been. She’s many different beings all wrapped up into one. He loves all of them. Even this new version he’s never encountered before. There never will be a Jemma Simmons he doesn’t love.

“You must miss the way things used to be.” Her voice is desperate, her eyes even more so. “The way it was.”

He decides to give her what she asks for. “Of course I do.” He looks down at the floor, unable to meet her eyes – so familiar yet not at all. “Things were good.”

It seems like she’s going to say something else; her mouth hangs open slightly and her chest heaves with things unsaid. But then she decides against it and turns way from him back to the screen and he finds himself so relieved not to have to see look of unease in her eyes.

-x-

What nobody prepared either of them for is the anger.

Not irrational anger, but the result of pent up frustration at not knowing nor remembering anything from her whole entire life.

It starts off as small comments. Nothing too harsh, nothing too out of order. Just small come-backs that, when spat out into the world, Jemma will pinch her nose with her thumb and forefinger and apologise with a sad smile.

Then sometimes it’s physical. Nothing towards anyone but instead directed at hapless furniture. Pillows find themselves thrown against the wall. The remains of a teacup lie on the counter next to the sink. A pencil is snapped in two and the writing end rolls into the space underneath the desk and cannot be located.

Jemma comes back from shopping one day, a task that she’d decided she was going to do herself. As soon as the doorframe rattles and her keys forcefully land on the table, Fitz knows it hasn’t been a successful trip.

“Jemma?” He asks softly, coming into the living room.

She paces back and forth, handbag thrown to the couch, coat flapping about her legs. The frustration radiates off her in waves. His entire being aches. Surely, he thinks, there cannot be any greater agony than the one of watching the one you love suffer and not be able to do a single thing about it.

“You all tell me I’m a doctor.” Fire covers all her words. “You all tell me I’m smart and that I – that I know _all_ of these things but I don’t, Fitz. I don’t.”

He doesn’t dare try to go near her, so he just holds his hands out in front of him. “It’ll come. It will. The doctors seem so optimistic.”

“But they aren’t sure, are they? They don’t know. Nobody knows. Nothing is the same and I know that. Oh, believe me, I know that.” She stops, suddenly, facing him. “I can feel I had a different life before. Nothing feels familiar. I’m constantly uncomfortable.”

“We’re trying, Jemma.” Gently, so as to cover the hurt he feels. “We’re trying.”

“But you all treat me differently. Like I might break. It’s too much! I’m meant to have a PhD and yet I don’t even know my own PIN number.” She shakes her head. Fitz aches to hold her, but she’s angry, terribly so, and everything about her screams _leave me alone._ “How can I ever hope to get better if you don’t treat me exactly as I was before? If you act like everything is different!”

There’s a pause. An ever so pregnant pause in which they just look at each other. Fitz doesn’t even think about what will come out of his mouth next. Something in her words has wounded him deeply, and everything next is all the things that come leaking out of such a thing.

“You were in a head on collision,” he states flatly, for any other way would cause such pain. “You were ejected from your seat, landed face down on the road. You’re lucky to even be alive. So yeah, maybe we treat you differently, Jemma, but things _are_ different, now.”

Things have changed, and no matter what way the future goes, it’s taken him a while to accept that there’s no going back. Whether she regains her memory or not, all of this will still have happened. There’s no erasing that.

Jemma looks at him, just looks. Blinks a couple of times. Then the tears in her eyes fall onto her face and her bottom lip trembles uncontrollably. Fitz is by her side in the blink of an eye, holding her as she cries into his shoulder, smoothing her hair back, mumbling soft nothings into the top of her head.

“I just want to go back,” she whispers. “I don’t want it to be like this anymore.”

“One day it won’t be.” For her, yet also for him. Perhaps if he speaks it into the void then it will come true. “Either way. Nothing lasts always.”

Except, perhaps, how much he loves her. He’s as sure as he is the day he met her. This kind of love, he knows, goes on into the forever.

-x-

Things do start to improve.

It’s slow. Small things. Small events. A birthday party. Her graduation. A day in which her father took her stargazing.

None of these newly recovered memories involve Fitz.

And he thinks that it’s okay. He’ll be alright. She’s alive. He’s so bloody grateful she’s alive. If she doesn’t remember him it’s okay. They’ll be alright. As long as she’s alive and healthy then he’ll be alright.

(He’ll be devastated, of course. But he must remind himself to be grateful. If he’s not, then he’s scared she’ll be lost forever for his own selfishness.)

So, it’s with genuine smiles and happy tears that he rejoices with her over these parts of herself falling back into place, being arranged the right way around. It’s genuine relief. Truly, this is all about her. She’s getting herself back and he couldn’t be more pleased.

But sometimes at night it gets a little too much. Lying there, on the couch, watching the moon through the slits in the curtain, waiting until morning. It’s easier to pretend during the day. It’s not so at night where there’s an empty spot on his chest and the ghost of a weight on his arm.

He gets the ring out sometimes. Face on it still looks dull, things still look bleak. But if he tilts it, angles it right, then he swears it shines so subtly in the moonlight, letting him know that everything, eventually, will be okay.

-x-

Fitz almost falls asleep standing up. One moment he’s stirring sauce in a pot, and the next he’s swaying and the spoon falls from his hand and clatters on the tiles.

Jemma takes one look at him, and decrees that he sleeps in the bed tonight. That she doesn’t want to hear an argument because he’s in no fit state to win it. He doesn’t fight, doesn’t tell her that it’s not the couch making him tired. He lets her lead him upstairs with her gentle hands, turn down the duvet and put on the light.

“Sweet dreams. Fitz,” she says at the door, and then leaves, shutting it softly behind her.

He does manage to sleep, though it’s more because of a biological need rather than any real desire to do so. It’s fitful, not very peaceful, and while his dreams are sweet indeed (because of course they’re all of her) it just intensifies the longing he feels and when he wakes at just past two in the morning, he feels so homesick for the past that he thinks he surely might die from it.

At that moment, that helpless, middle of the night moment where all seems lost, the bedroom door opens. Light spills in from the hallway for only a second before the door shuts again.

“Fitz?” Jemma whispers. He somehow manages a smile; she’s never been one to eschew manners even if they are pointless.

“I’m up,” he whispers, going up on his elbows. She stands by the door in her pyjamas, wringing her hands but only slightly.

“I was wondering...” She stops, clears her throat then starts again. “Can I just… lie next to you?”

He says nothing, simply pulls back the duvet and follows her with his eyes as she clambers in. It’s uncharted territory, and for a few moments they lie on their backs in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, simply trying to adjust.

“This is my side of the bed, isn’t it?”

He chuckles, the sound so out of place in the night. “Yeah, it’s yours.”

“Good.” Her nod is visible out of the corner of his eye. “I thought that. I just wanted to make sure.”

Fitz doesn’t doubt she did. She does things recently, and an accompanying memory will float back to her.

There’s a pair of eyes on him, and when he meets them he finds they sparkle even in the dark.

“Is it alright if I…?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.”

Jemma’s head settles on his chest and instinctively his arm curls around her. They both take a deep breath at the same time. There’s an ease, a relief, that he feels deep within his bones. She sinks into him, and he swears that’s what she feels, too.

“You know what you said earlier, about being different?”

He must resist the urge to kiss her on top of her hair. “Yeah.”

“I suppose I never really stopped to think about that. I’ve been so focused on people acting differently that I forgot that things have changed, regardless of whether I want them to have done or not.” She inhales deeply. “I’m sorry, Fitz, for the way I’ve been acting. You’ve been nothing less than extraordinary this entire time, and it seems like all I’ve done is punish you for it.”

He cannot help it, and he holds her tighter. “It’s alright, Jemma.”

“No, it’s not.” She shakes her head. “It’s not alright.”

“It is.” Earnest, trying to make her understand that while this has been difficult, he can only imagine what it’s like for her. That he still has her, here and breathing in his arms. The memories of the life they’d made together. Compared to the alternative, the other way things could have gone, this is not hard.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” he whispers. “This… though it might not feel like one a lot of the time, is a gift, really.”

“Really?” He feels the vibrations from Jemma’s laugh in his chest. “I was thinking more like a curse.”

It’s not a curse. Not a blessing, but not a curse. He’ll never speak of it, never tell her, but he’ll never forget the feeling in his chest when the police officers turned up at the door and told him what happened. The way the world had seemed to slow down, that the officers’ mouths were moving but he had such a time trying to decipher the words coming out. The way that, even though the nurse had tried to prepare him, the sight of her lying so still and prone in that hospital bed had been enough to bring him to his knees.

To have gone the other way… that would have killed him, he’s sure of it. So this is a gift. This new life, whether it seems like it or not, is a gift. He finally understands it, now.

Unable to help himself, he presses a soft kiss to her hair, feeling the way her head falls deeper into his chest. “We’re not cursed,” he whispers. “We’re invincible.”

And he truly and honestly believes it


	4. it is most sane and sunly and more it cannot die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 4. How brilliant is the rainbow that comes after such a storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the ending! We've arrived!  
> This was nice to write. An ending that I think is so deserved after everything that I've put them through. Sorry it took a bit longer than planned! Projects and deadlines and all of that other fun stuff got in the way. But here it is! I hope you enjoy!  
> Thank you so much for all of your reading, your kudos and your kind comments. You are all truly awesome beans and I'm very lucky <3

They decide to start again.

Fitz can’t remember exactly how they started dating. At one moment they were classmates, colleagues who sometimes went out for dinner or drinks, and the next they were waking up next to each other and shared their hearts as well as their lives.

So, in a way, it’s nice to ‘date’ again. They go to the cinema, sneak in their own food to circumvent the ridiculous prices and hold hands whilst giggling like teenagers at the back of the room. They go ice-skating at the Christmas Markets, and Jemma holds his hand the whole way around and laughs when he practically somersaults and lands on his backside in the middle of the rink.

They walk arm in arm on the way home, and sneak in kisses when nobody is looking and, if he doesn’t think about it too much, he can almost let himself get lost in the moment and just enjoy it.

For he does enjoy it. The way her lips mould against his. The way her fingers feel on his face. The way his skin tingles, even long after her touch as left it. Things he thought he’d forgotten or never dreamed to feel again. The winter doesn’t seem quite so harsh. Home feels like home.

When they lie next to each other at night, her head resting against his chest and his am curled protectively around her shoulder, sleep doesn’t desert him as much as it once did. It’s not too long before he’s able to sail away to the land of dreams. It’s just that the dreams are all still of her; of her laughter, of her smile, of the look in her eyes when she tells him that she loves him. Things that he knows, and things that he’s afraid he’ll never see again.

-x-

Three weeks to Christmas and Christmas songs are firmly ingrained in his head.

Fitz has never been much of a whistler, but apparently at Christmas he makes an exception. He whistles in the morning while making their breakfast. He whistles on the way to the supermarket, and subsequently around the supermarket. When a particularly catchy Christmas single worms its way into his head, Jemma complains that he whistles it in his sleep.

One morning he and Jemma are watching television whilst doing work on their respective laptops. He doesn’t even realise he’s whistling until Jemma smacks her hand off the couch.

“Ugh, Fitz, enough of the whistling, please! This is exactly like last Christmas – in fact, exactly like every Christmas! One song in your head and you’re whistling away there while some of us are trying to get some work done! I wouldn’t mind if you were even in tune. Fitz, I love you, but I have never heard anyone whistle out of tune worse than you.”

Logically, the words should produce hurt, perhaps defensiveness. Instead, there’s only a wide grin that he cannot help himself from displaying, and the fluttering of his heart in his chest.

“Why are you looking so pleased?” She sighs, irritation palpable. Never has he been so glad to be on the receiving end of her irritation in his whole life.

“Jemma,” he breathes, her name like a prayer in his mouth, pleading, hoping, begging.

“Oh my God,” she whispers, shutting over her laptop with shaky hands. “Fitz…”

He goes over to sit next to her, gently clasping her face in his hands, swiping away the small tear with his thumb.

“I still don’t remember everything,” she warns softly, shaking her head.

He shakes his own, finding his eyes filling with tears. “You remember _something_.”

“Yes,” she chuckles, leaning her face into his hand. “I suppose I do.”

It’s not the whole puzzle, but it’s a piece, and it’s enough. It’s more than enough. It’s everything.

-x-

More bits and pieces fall like snow.

It starts fast. Memories start flying in. Not in any sort of order. Nothing logical. It’s their first day in the lab together, followed by the day he met her parents, followed by their first date. It’s not complete, not whole, but by God it’s s _omething._

She kisses him one night in the dark, when it feels like they’re the only two people in the world. It’s not new, not at all, and that ever so old but ever so precious feeling of her lips against his in that knowing way makes him shiver, even in their heat.

 _“_ I know I love you,” she whispers against his skin. “I’m sorry I forgot.”

“I love you enough for the both of us,” he whispers back, enjoying the all of the things he thought he’d lost forever. “I always will.”

He holds her so tightly, he thinks they might glow in the dark. That wonderful feeling of love settling into its rightful place between them, making his heart feel whole again.

-x-

“Fitz!” Jemma cries one morning, not too far away from Christmas. They’re wrapping presents. Jemma’s trying to think of something more eloquent than ‘sorry I scared you with my car accident and amnesia’ to write on a Christmas card.

“What? What is it?” He asks, looking up from where he’s trying to finalise his mum’s flight arrangements for the festivities. “Are you alright?”

“More than alright, you silly man.” There are tears in her eyes but a smile on her lips. After recent events, it seems like a complete contradiction. “We’re _engaged_.”

He smiles a little bit, lost in the memory she must have rediscovered. She hadn’t suspected, not at all, and the brightness of her eyes and the width of her smile had only made all of his secrets worth it.

“You remember that, huh?”

“Only just. Oh, how could I ever forget we’re going to get married, Fitz.” She looks down, smile disappearing, and he hurries to reassure her.

“There were other things to worry about, Jemma,” he says, ever so soft. “Besides, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always marry you.”

“Even now?” She jokes.

“Forever,” he assures her.

“We haven’t arranged anything yet,” she says, though there’s a hint of a question in her voice.

“Waiting until after Christmas was the plan,” he says, confidently, gears turning in his mind. “We were going to talk to the whole family.”

“Yes, very sensible idea of mine,” she says, attention drifting back to her laptop. No doubt in there she’ll find a file containing many of the numerous lists she made in the days succeeding engagement. He doesn’t know. He never went through her things.

His eyes drift back to the easyJet website, but he no longer gives his full attention to the booking confirmation as he was. Instead, he thinks of other things. Other, more pleasant things.

He thinks he can hear the ring sparkle, even from all the way down here.

-x-

Christmas Eve. The lights are low and there’s a log crackling in their seldom-used fireplace. The cheesiest of cheesy Christmas films plays on in the background.

This is the last night before chaos descends and the next few days pass by in such a blur that individual moments won’t be discernible. They sit together, on their couch, Jemma curled into Fitz’s side, Fitz’s hands gently tangled in her hair.

Though outwardly he appears relaxed, and he is, mostly. But his left leg jiggles slightly, heel bouncing off the floor, and the hand not in her hair cannot seem to settle in a comfortable position.

He tries to focus on the film, on the soft weight of the love of his life against him. This isn’t the moment, he thinks. This isn’t it. But the more he thinks that, the more he realises that their finally decorated Christmas tree twinkles behind them, and it’s quiet, which won’t be afforded to them for the next week. They sit, together fully and finally. There’s no better moments than this.

“Hey, Jemma,” he whispers, nudging her softly to see if she’s away.

“Yes?” She twists around, looking up at him with twinkly eyes he’ll never tire of seeing.

“Sit up for a second?”

With curious eyes she obliges, allowing him to reach under the Christmas tree for a small box he hid there not too many days ago. He keeps it hidden in his closed fist until he turns around fully, partly for the surprise and partly for the nerves that have surfaced in his chest.

“What’s this?” Jemma asks, tilting her head whilst smiling softly. When he unfurls his fingers, and she takes in the black velvet box, her eyes light up with recognition before the tears appear.

“Oh…” she breathes. He flips open the lid. The light is low, but the ring sparkles magnificently. This is the right moment.

“Jemma Simmons,” he begins, the smile in his voice evident, though not quite hiding the tears. “would you do me the honour of agreeing to marry me for the second time?”

“Of course, I will,” she beams. “I’d agree to marry you a hundred times over.”

The ring slides on as magically as it did the first time, only now it seems to shine brighter. A testament to their invincibility.

She kisses him, soft and slow, as though making an impression. Looping her arms around his neck, she pulls away and murmurs, “I don’t know how I could ever forget this feeling.”

“No more talking of what you’ve forgotten,” he tells her gently, pressing a finger over her mouth. “Let’s just make more memories.”

Jemma smiles so softly, eyes shimmering with thousands of stars. She’s so beautiful, he thinks. The most beautiful thing he has ever laid eyes upon. She moves her arms to around his middle, and fits herself against him. His own arms come around her instinctively.

“I’m going to make thousands of memories,” she whispers, her breath warm against his neck. “I’m going to fill myself to the brim with them and etch them onto my heart so I can never forget again.”

He chuckles softly. How utterly Jemma. Everything is seen as a challenge. He loves her endlessly.

“Okay,” he whispers, “I’m just going to hold onto you.”

“How long for?” There’s a smile in her voice. It’s like music.

His answer is quick, and is accompanied by a kiss on top of her hair. “Forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day!


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